General Question

What does being "green" mean to you?

Do you have a personal idea of what it means to be green? Do you think there is some sort of generally accepted idea of what it means to be green out there? How green are you, both with respect to your own idea of greenness, and the social idea of greenness (whatever you think that is)?

17 Answers

I guess socially I’m greener than average (in my country, of course) because I always take care of turning out the lights when I’m not there and stuff. Personally, I don’t consider myself green at all, and I realize that turning out the light doesn’t help the slightest bit considering I’ve seen so many more people who are wasting so much more energy than I’m saving. I’m afraid the only real change I can make is making it coming from the top, so I do take it heavily into consideration when making my vote, and I try to convince others to do the same. That, too, is just a drop of water, though.

Being green means being mindful – of what we consume; who produced what we consume; what the cost was on the environment; how our actions impact other humans and the environment, and minimizing these all.

I don’t believe change can come from the top. It comes from each of us. Each bucket is made up of millions of droplets of water. As more droplets turned green, the bucket grows greener.

Each dollar I spend is a vote for the kind of world I want to live in. Are these foods good for my body, my family, and the earth? Are these products made by a company that cares for it’s employees and the resources that is uses? Which decision will result in the least amount of waste and suffering?

We can’t act perfectly, and we each make decisions that aren’t always green. But by being mindful, we can measure our successes and failures, strive to do better, and perhaps influence the other droplets in the bucket.

My partner is starting his eco-consulting business, GenerationGreen. To us, being green means doing all you can to be mindful of the environment. And each person can choose what that means to them. In our home, we recycle, compost, grow some of our vegetables, use cloths diapers, don’t use ACs, switched all lightbulbs for more energy efficiency, we reuse all that we can, like I make toyboxes out of carton boxes and we use all scrap wood (our own and around the house) to build our furniture. We’re mindful of all products we buy, all the materials we use. We’re are also going to install structurally insulated panels on the roof. We make sure our fridge is stacked so it doesn’t waste energy, we buy baby clothes from Inhabitat to support green orgs, we have carbon credits, we got rid of our car in favor of public transportation, etc. etc. We’re active with many petitions against logging, we’re educated on what people do to the environment, in our education and in our experience. I have taken environmental courses, have applied to jobs that have a lot to do with saving the environment. I think there is a lot more we can be doing and we teach our kids all we know. Oh and right now I’m working on figuring out a non toxic floor cleaner solution.

Being green has nothing to do with the natural environment. Being green simply means preserving an environment that is comfortable to humans. We see a problem in the future that may effect our comfortable way of life, so we start campaigns to try to preserve OUR environment.

Youtube George Carlin and his views on global warming. He can explain it much better.

Although I don’t use solar energy or heat my house with cow poo, I do think we make some steps toward being green. We recycle as a family, reuse our fabric shopping bags, turn off lights and unplug appliances while they aren’t being used. Although we can all do more to help the earth, I think we can be a bit green by just being conscious of our own actions and how they impact the earth we live in.

I completely agree with @YARNLADY on the subject of “green” being big business. I’m kind of skeptical of many of the products claiming to be green.

As for my family personally, we’ve done small things like replace lightbulbs with those compact flourescent bulbs (I found out we can get one case a year from our electric company for much, much, cheaper than the store). We use cloth bags, buy local foods whenever possible, recycle everything we can, and buy local produce for much of the spring and summer. I’m not fanatical about, but try to be mindful enough to make an informed choice. I would love to have a big garden, grow tons of vegetables, and then preserve them, but plants hate me. They seem to want to die rather than grow in my garden. Although so far this year, my tomatoes and basil are thriving. Knock on wood.

Unfortunately, some of the worst things we do can’t be changed. There is no public transportation available to us, so we drive almost everywhere. My husband drives a big SUV sometimes several hours a day, but he has to have a large vehicle for his business and has to run all over the state to meet with various clients or work in their homes. I also have an SUV because we have a big family and because our vehicles have to be interchangeable in case one breaks down. We can’t afford to trade them in for hybrids right now, but I do look forward to the day when at least I can downgrade to a more fuel-efficent car.

@MissAusten I have a hard time worrying about driving an SUV when airplanes dump enough fuel to fuel every car in the nation everytime the are getting ready to land and have ‘too much’ in their tanks. They just spew it all over the countryside.

In some ways, the idea of the efficiency of individual vehicles is misleading. If you have an SUV because you have a big family, and you actually have several people in the car on most trips, that is a lot more efficient than one person using, say, a Prius, and no one else is in the car.

We should really be looking at person miles per gallon, not just miles per gallon.

We recycle, use reusable shopping bags, turn off lights and appliances, We make sure we clean our dogs mess up off the pavement!! A biggie in our house as we are fed up of standing in the stuff left behind by others :( !!
We do use our cars a lot but can;t rely on public transprot to get us to our jobs ao they are a neccessity. However we are currently growing our own veggies and fuit trees/bushes and have 2 compost bins :)

@sakura We too have begun to grow our own veggies, it is our first year. I live in a city and I never thought I could have a garden, but it apparently can be done anywhere. My family used public transportation for 6 years, but as the kids got older, it just became more difficult to sustain life without a car.